Pizza (Homemade and Corn-free)

Sometimes we just want sausage pizza. It isn't as easy as having one brought to your door, but my recipe is pretty easy. I can't believe we haven't taken pictures of our pizza yet, but I will post some next time we make it. There are several things that I do ahead of time that make it much quicker. First, I always shred my cheese when I buy it. I buy Kerrygold cheese when I am going to make pizza or Mexican so I shred all of it at once and put it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. We prefer Dubliner for pizzas and it happens to be the cheapest, too. Woohoo!

I brown my meat with diced onions and garlic (you can just puree these in the food processor if you have a son like mine who doesn't like pieces of onion in his food but likes the flavor) and Italian seasonings for the Italian sausage. I can't find safe pork so I make mine from 75/25 pastured beef (some people consider this ratio too fatty but fat is good for you). It is delicious and easy - I could mix all the herbs into it and form it into patties while raw, but I prefer to just add the herbs to the meat while it is browning. I can't tell you specific amounts of herbs because I never measure. Just add the following to taste: fennel seed, rosemary, red pepper flakes, sage, sea salt. Add a little touch of organic sugar if you think it needs it - most commercial Italian sausage has some sweetener but we generally leave that out.

While my meat is browning, I chop my veggies and make my pizza sauce. I always add fresh basil, garlic, onions and red bell peppers (loaded with Vitamin C) on my pizza, but  you can add whatever you like. If you like broccoli on your pizza, go for it! Just beware of mushrooms since they can be grown on a corny medium. The sauce is very simple, too. You can mix this up and it will keep in the fridge for several days and it even freezes well (use it like pizza quick sauce). To a can of safe tomato paste, I add the following: basil, oregano, organic sugar, sea salt, touch of extra virgin olive oil and water. Stir it until it is smooth but still pretty thick (the only way to screw this up is to add to much water - err on the side of too thick rather than too thin). Then I turn my attention to the pizza crust.


Pizza crust for 2 round pizza pans:

4 cups flour (organic wheat is the only ingredient)
1 1/2 tbsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 - 3 cups of water (may need more)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients in bowl and make a well in the middle (just an indention for the water). Add some of the water to the middle of the bowl and stir in the flour as you need it. When it gets all incorporated and you have flour left, add more water and stir more flour in. Do this until all the flour is mixed and you have a dough. Pour a handful of extra virgin olive oil into your palm and rub your hands together to coat them both. Pull the dough in half and put each half on a pizza pan. Making sure your hands are well coated, use them to push the dough to the edges of the pan. Don't worry about getting it perfect, you want it to look home-made, don't you? Bake at 425F for about 8 - 12 minutes. Take from the oven and cover with toppings. Bake for another 12 - 15 minutes and enjoy.